Start-up whiskey f irm gets €500k water bill
Utility is accused of reneging on a deal
I RISH Water has been accused of failing to honour an agreement and delivering a blow to a start-up firm that plans to hire 55 people.
The controversial utility is demanding € 500,000 from a whiskey distillery planned for Carlow – ‘countermanding’ a previous council decision, Councillor Patrick McKee said.
Ironically, the latest Irish Water row came on the day Simon Coveney launched a high-powered international sales strategy promoting the importance of the growing Irish whiskey sector.
Mr McKee, a Renua candidate in the upcoming Carlow-Kilkenny byelection, called on the Government and Environment Minister Alan Kelly to ‘rein in’ Irish Water.
He said that the new utility is ‘countermanding a decision by Carlow County Council to grant a water treatment licence to Walsh Whiskey’ and is demanding that the company pay €500,000 for Irish Water’s infrastructural expenditure.
He said: ‘This is nothing short of extortion on behalf of the Government and is also anti-jobs and anti-enterprise.’
Mr McKee added: ‘ In 2013 Walsh Whiskey Distillery was granted a licence by Carlow County Council to allow their by- product water to be sent to the processing plant in Bagenalstown once they commence distilling operations in January 2016. Since then, authority for such matters has been transferred from the county council to Irish Water who are not honouring the licence Walsh Whiskey were granted.’
As he pointed out such actions by Irish Water ‘could stymie the resurgence of this sector’, Food Minister Simon Coveney was launching the Irish Whiskey Association’s ‘Vision for Irish Whiskey’, an event setting out the industry’s ‘ambition for the future’.
Mr Coveney said that those who champion Irish whiskey are ‘generating growth and export’. ‘ Irish whiskey brands now represent the fastest-growing spirit globally and with investment of €1billion planned over a tenyear period,’ he said. Walsh Whiskey – which produces popular brands such as Writers Tears, distilled at Cork’s Midleton whiskey plant – also expressed its shock at the large bill yesterday. Speaking on KCLR FM, co-owner Bernard Walsh said it did everything ‘by the book’ adding of the massive bill: ‘It came left of field.’
Irish Water said it is obliged to recover the costs of delivering infrastructure from new businesses that need new infrastructure. An Irish Water spokesman said: ‘Since Jan- uary 2014, if a person or business is applying for planning permission, the applicant needs to apply separately to Irish Water for a connection for water or sewerage services.
‘If a business is making a planning application that needs new water infrastructure, which is solely required to service the development, then Irish Water is obliged to recover the costs of delivering this infrastructure from that business.’
ANNUAL exports of Irish whiskey are valued at €365million – a figure that has risen by 220 per cent in the past decade.
And now the Irish Whiskey Association and a group of IBEC economists have joined forces to help shape the future of this important sector.
Their resulting ‘Vision for Irish Whiskey’ strategy was launched yesterday by Minister for Food Simon Coveney.
On the same day, in fact, it came to light that the enterprising Walsh Whiskey Distillery in Carlow had been sent a bill by Irish Water for €500,000 – when it doesn’t even begin distilling until next year.
With a water treatment licence already granted to Walsh Whiskey by Carlow’s local authority prior to the establishment of Irish Water, this arrangement is now being reneged upon and the new enterprise finds itself facing a crippling bill before a single bottle of whiskey rolls off the production line at the plant.
With our once-thriving whiskey industry in the throes of a major comeback, and with almost 30 new distilleries planned to open here in the next few years, this vital sector deserves all the support it can get.
We need new businesses, and plenty of them. Of course they need to pay their way. But what they also need is encouragement, support and every assistance possible.
What they don’t need is Irish Water jumping the gun, and pulling the rug on entrepreneurship.